Chernoh
Sesay
Jr.

Chernoh M. Sesay,
Jr. is an historian of the Black Atlantic and of colonial North American and
antebellum United States history whose research focuses on the intersection of
religion, black political thought, identity, and community formation. He is
currently completing a book manuscript entitled Black Boston and the Making of African-American Freemasonry:
Leadership, Religion, and Community in Early America. In this study,
the early development of black Freemasonry, from its founder, Prince Hall, to
its prominent antebellum member, David Walker, becomes a prism through which to
consider various relationships between religion, gender, community, and
interracial and black politics. He is also exploring how different forms of
nineteenth and twentieth-century African American historicism were comprised of
aligned and competing theological and secular concerns. He has published a book
chapter in addition to articles in the New
England Quarterly,
the Journal of African American
Studies, and the Forum for European Contributions to African American
Studies. In addition to
book reviews written for the Massachusetts
Historical Review, H-Net Law, the Journal of the Early
Republic, and the Journal of American History, Dr. Sesay has also written for Black Perspectives, the scholarly blog of the African American Intellectual
History Society.